But it wasn't until 1897 that David Schwartz made a successful flight from Tempelhof field – which became one of Berlin's three airports – in a rigid airship that was a direct forerunner of the globetrotting dirigibles created by Ferdinand von Zeppelin. After Schwartz's death, von Zeppelin bought technical data from his widow.

This early incarnation of what, in the 1920s and '30s, became an icon of exotic, futuristic travel clearly was not what hundreds of thousands of people across the United States reported seeing in 1897.

Duh!

Quote:

The country was in the midst of one of the worst economic depressions in its history, with some two million people out of work. Small wonder that they should cast their eyes heavenward for signs of hope.

What they saw – or thought they saw or convinced themselves they'd seen – was a "cigar-like object" with "great wings" several kilometres above the ground.

Hmmm... economic turmoil. Sounds familiar?

So, we may have two explanations: either the public was too gullible and influenced by those popular magazines describing airships that they suffered from mass hysteria, or perhaps when a community is in a situation of emotional distress, you are more "receptive" or "syncroniced" to events and phenomena that you wouldn't pay attention otherwise. But that "reception" might still be contaminated by their cultural baggage, so they ended up seeing something that resembled the machines of Jules Verne's novels.
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!